At first he thinks it's just the platform beneath his feet that's moving, set loose from the cavern wall by his weight. But then when he notices the dirt and rocks falling from overhead, he realizes that some sort of a tremor is occurring. He turns back to the ladder leading above but knows that it is too late to climb back up - the tremors are growing more violent by the second. What a time for an earthquake, he thinks, just as a new tremor pitches him against the platform railing.
Teetering over the edge, he glimpses the roiling waves of the waters below. Then he is thrown back from the railing and onto the floor of the platform. An enormous grinding sound assails the very air of the entire cavern around him. He casts about trying to find an escape, and finally spots a metal door in the rock several feet away.
In a desperate scramble he lunges his way over to the door. Grabbing hold of the wheel on the door he finds to his relief that it turns. Then he wrenches the door back and sprawls inside, just as a shower of larger rocks strikes the platform behind him.
He reaches out and drags the door shut. And then he is alone in a steel room, lit by a bare bulb that somehow, to his astonishment, is working. And with him in this room, sitting conspicuously in the centre of the bare concrete floor, is a woman's red high heel shoe.
Eighth chapter in an ongoing serial based on @mariannewest's daily #freewrite writing prompts. Here are the previous chapters listed below:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
And here is the link to Chapter Nine
Written in five minutes from the writing prompt, "Shoe" as part of the #freewrite exercise. Image is also by me. You can view the prompt here and check out the other entries; try them all on and see which one fits the best. Thanks to @mariannewest for creating and running this daily cobbling together of literary step taking.